Captain Hesperus
Harbinger of the End Times and Apostle of Ghan
We've all wanted to do it, deep down. You've always wanted to have your favourite Exalt go all Gundam or Patlabor in twenty feet of magical material super-weapon. But then you sit there and read the rules. Essentially Warstriders are suits of armour. Suits of armour that max out your strength, boost your soak through the sky and impose often punishing Mobility, Fatigue and Essence commitment costs. Also, while castles, walls and equally humongous targets are fair game, you are crippled against anything man-sized.
And the thematic joy of having a mobile suit is, it can take crippling damage and still fight on. The enemy landmate rips the right arm off yours, so you just come back with a series of left hooks, sweep up your fallen right arm and use it to club in the other guy's head. In Exalted, the suit takes no damage, but you end up screaming in agony because 'Essence feedback' transfers the damage back through to you. Okay, I understand that the magitech idea that you can extend your senses out to the extremities of the suit, but even then your sense of touch is dulled, but yet when your 'Strider takes 'damage', it transfers all that damage back up to you.
So I propose an alteration of the current Warstrider rules. Treat the Warstrider as a unique type of vehicle, it's structure broken up into sections. The most heavily armoured section would be the torso, where the pilot is to be located, the next well armoured would be the legs, as they are most likely to be targeted by the majority of your opponents to immobilise you. Finally the arms (and possibly the head) are the least armoured, allowing flexibility and speed where it matters at a trade-off for heavy armour. On top of this, the different locations have health levels in the style of other vehicles. But here is where the unique aspects of the Warstrider come in. When the Warstrider takes damage that gets through its armour, the pilot can opt to take none, half (rounded down) or all of the damage dice before they are rolled. These can then be soaked with Stamina and Charms. Any dice allocated to the Warstrider are rolled and the damaged location loses health levels as normal.
As the locations of the Warstrider take damage, there are deliterous effects as with vehicles, but the effects are dependent of the location.
Arms, for instance, as they take more damage, would lose functionality until the point they literally fall or are torn from the torso. Legs would lose mobility and cause more difficulty in moving across changing terrains as they become damaged, with pronounced limping and eventual immobilisation. Torso damage is a bit more problematic. Since it is the most vital and most heavily armoured part of the Warstrider, I would assume that that is where the most essential functions of the Warstrider (along with the pilot) can be found. As the torso takes damage, the pilot's ability to choose where damage is allocated between themselves and the Warstrider is more haphazard, with the pilot taking more and more of the potential damage as the feedback systems malfunction. Additionally, in-built Essence-powered weapons would become more erratic as their linkage to the Warstrider's Essence channels become disrupted. Finally, the Warstrider's power systems would suffer a catastrophic failure which could result in either a total shutdown of the Warstrider or a violent Essence explosion. Heads, if they are sufficiently advanced, might lose the function of Essence visors and other sensing arrays, and even get ripped off, leaving the pilot's head poking out the top of the torso (if the suit is quite new or basic) or totally blind within the torso of the machine, if the Warstrider had a totally hologlyphic visualisation suite installed.
My idea's in the early stages of development so I'd love input from anyone.
Captain Hesperus
And the thematic joy of having a mobile suit is, it can take crippling damage and still fight on. The enemy landmate rips the right arm off yours, so you just come back with a series of left hooks, sweep up your fallen right arm and use it to club in the other guy's head. In Exalted, the suit takes no damage, but you end up screaming in agony because 'Essence feedback' transfers the damage back through to you. Okay, I understand that the magitech idea that you can extend your senses out to the extremities of the suit, but even then your sense of touch is dulled, but yet when your 'Strider takes 'damage', it transfers all that damage back up to you.
So I propose an alteration of the current Warstrider rules. Treat the Warstrider as a unique type of vehicle, it's structure broken up into sections. The most heavily armoured section would be the torso, where the pilot is to be located, the next well armoured would be the legs, as they are most likely to be targeted by the majority of your opponents to immobilise you. Finally the arms (and possibly the head) are the least armoured, allowing flexibility and speed where it matters at a trade-off for heavy armour. On top of this, the different locations have health levels in the style of other vehicles. But here is where the unique aspects of the Warstrider come in. When the Warstrider takes damage that gets through its armour, the pilot can opt to take none, half (rounded down) or all of the damage dice before they are rolled. These can then be soaked with Stamina and Charms. Any dice allocated to the Warstrider are rolled and the damaged location loses health levels as normal.
As the locations of the Warstrider take damage, there are deliterous effects as with vehicles, but the effects are dependent of the location.
Arms, for instance, as they take more damage, would lose functionality until the point they literally fall or are torn from the torso. Legs would lose mobility and cause more difficulty in moving across changing terrains as they become damaged, with pronounced limping and eventual immobilisation. Torso damage is a bit more problematic. Since it is the most vital and most heavily armoured part of the Warstrider, I would assume that that is where the most essential functions of the Warstrider (along with the pilot) can be found. As the torso takes damage, the pilot's ability to choose where damage is allocated between themselves and the Warstrider is more haphazard, with the pilot taking more and more of the potential damage as the feedback systems malfunction. Additionally, in-built Essence-powered weapons would become more erratic as their linkage to the Warstrider's Essence channels become disrupted. Finally, the Warstrider's power systems would suffer a catastrophic failure which could result in either a total shutdown of the Warstrider or a violent Essence explosion. Heads, if they are sufficiently advanced, might lose the function of Essence visors and other sensing arrays, and even get ripped off, leaving the pilot's head poking out the top of the torso (if the suit is quite new or basic) or totally blind within the torso of the machine, if the Warstrider had a totally hologlyphic visualisation suite installed.
My idea's in the early stages of development so I'd love input from anyone.
Captain Hesperus
