Hey everyone!
So I’m going to run a UW campaign, and the pitch for it, which neither me or my friends could resist because it sounds too cool, is basically “Firefly meets Gundam meets Cowboy Bebop”. The space opera part is going to be the main thing, and UW is perfect for it, but I also want Mechas to play a good part on this game.
The standard asset creation rules are brilliant, BUT one thing that I’m looking into is making some very light, specific changes to how Mechas would function. What I came up with is pretty simple, and I do like the sound of it, but I’d love your opinions if it sounds too broken:
Every Mecha would have its own Physique and Mettle stats, along with its Armor. They would all start at -1, but players would have 1+X points (X being the Mecha’s Class) to distribute between the three, with a +2 max, so a Class 2 Mecha would have 3 points to either equal them all to 0/0/0 or max one off to +2/0/-1.
My reasoning for it is mainly to give more possibilites to the players by disassociating the rolls while controlling their Mecha from their own Stats, so they could make Mechas that contrast or complement their own weaknessess, with differing Stats.
What do you guys think? Has anything like this been done before, does it sound too horrible and broken? Would love to hear your opinions! Thanks in advance!
I’m not sure if Armor can be negative. Any kind of Mecha starting with -1 armor makes little sense to me, but that depends what do you understand as Mecha, for me Mecha == power armor from fallout.
There are vehicle rules, why do you want to not use them? There are Walkers and QuadWalkers, tags etc.
Stats in this games are very abstract, so Physique is not only raw strength and punch strength, it is more like how well do you coordinate your body. If you take an ungraceful character, put them in a walker, sure they can now punch through wall, but their ability to control a walker is still poor as their own body coordination is poor. Same with Mettle it is not only agility for range combat, it is also willpower for psyche abilities, does wearing a mech makes you a better psycher?
I’d strongly recommend using existing rules.
Smaller Mecha like power armor size can also be Carapce trait from attire, so you can build Mechas using attire options.
So for example using well known Warhammer 40k, a Space Marine is wearing an attire with Carapace trait, Terminator Armor would be Carapace + Shielded or Armored, while Dreadnought is a Walker land vehicle.