Primervadndb
patreon
Hey everyone, sorry for the mecha artificer not being out yet.
🕑 Added 2021-08-02 22:02:01 +0000 UTCAlright, so, I'm going to level with you all here.
This subclass is giving me a LOT of trouble to design. Capturing the flavor of a giant robot piloted by a dude in 5e is a serious challenge that I kinda need your help with. Here's a list of the issues I am having right now.
Mecha Flavor Vs. Mecha Mechanics - Hitting the flavor and mechanics balance point is not an easy task here. To illustrate this, I'll ask a simple question: What are the inherent traits of mecha? Well, they're really freaking big, durable, have lots of weapons, generally really expensive government projects, etc. That's.... a lot to encapsulate in a subclass balance wise. Size is very strong in dnd. The bigger you are, the more damage you do, the harder it is for you to move, the better your strength is, armor class is often affected, and more. And that's just the size question of mecha. Sure, I could fall back on the old standby of enlarge/reduce, but that doesn't really get across what I want for the mecha artificer.
Then there is the kind of mecha flavor you want to get across. Do you want it broad enough to encapsulate Evangelion, Pacific Rim, Power Rangers, and Jet Jaguar, or something more specific? This is a question I have been tearing my hair out trying to answer lol.
Once you've decided on flavor and what you want to narrow in on mechanics wise, you need to hit a balance point between them. I think limiting the mechs size to Large for most of the game is the easiest compromise. You can get bigger later or with spells. But what about how the metal mech effects your AC, speed, and such. Do we include unarmed strikes? Lasers? Missile launchers? Big swords? What about HP? Does the mech have its own since it's an object? If it does have AC, does it work like Druid Wild Shape?
I swear, I've gone through 16 different iterations of the 3rd level features alone at this point trying to hit a balance here and I feel like I'm gonna go through 16 more before I am satisfied enough to post it.
I am really sorry for it taking so long, but it is because I really want to do it justice. Mecha is something I LOVE and I don't want to post a half assed version of anything, but especially not this. So I hope you all are okay with waiting a bit longer for it.
