Author Topic: Battlemech quirks and new mechs in a campaign  (Read 2621 times)

Labyr

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Battlemech quirks and new mechs in a campaign
« on: 17 March 2013, 03:21:47 »
My AToW group plays with Battlemech quirks. So far everyone has stuck with their original ride with the original mech quirks. But I got to wondering, what is a good way for handling the quirks for our company's new mechs?

The easiest and least interesting way is to just say that any mechs not bought during chargen don't start with quirks. That's what we do know but quirks are cool and I'd like to see more of them.

The faction table provides a list of quirks, it's impartial but the quirks aren't balanced. So mechs with a lot of positive quirks are going to be more valuable than mechs with negative quirks but have a similar cost (both C-Bill and BV). We could balance all this by making quirks balance out. I think the only way to do that without munching things out is have the GM pick the balancing traits. What I would really love though is a way for mechs with uneven quirks to be balanced with cost. My initial thoughts quirks are worth 5% of a mech's C-Bills/BV, has anyone ever tried something like this?

At any rate I'm curious how your group handles vehicle quirks and how well it works for you.

Maelwys

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Re: Battlemech quirks and new mechs in a campaign
« Reply #1 on: 18 March 2013, 16:56:22 »
I'm of the opinion that if the players purchased quirks using XP for their characters, then the number of points spent should transfer over. Not necessarily the exact quirks, but the points atleast. Maybe make the first quirk be a random one, the second a player pick, and third a GM pick (obviously one of the picks could wipe out all the points, but I figure random, player, GM is a good order).

BirdofPrey

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Re: Battlemech quirks and new mechs in a campaign
« Reply #2 on: 18 March 2013, 18:08:24 »
I agree, if the PCs paid XP for their mech, the replacement should follow that as far as reasonable, so they should be getting something in the sme weight class, and the quirks, while different, should have the same net TP as what was paid for.

Another thing I have thought of but haven't had the chance to test: have any quirks be specific to the mech rather than being paid for by the character, and any quirks should modify the Vehicle and Custom Vehicle TP requirements.

Maelwys

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Re: Battlemech quirks and new mechs in a campaign
« Reply #3 on: 19 March 2013, 04:24:31 »
Another thing I have thought of but haven't had the chance to test: have any quirks be specific to the mech rather than being paid for by the character, and any quirks should modify the Vehicle and Custom Vehicle TP requirements.

That's kind of an interesting idea. So say an assault `Mech would have a group of quirks that adds up to -1, so you could purchase that assault `Mech at +7 instead of the normal +8?

You know, I wonder if it might not be possible to combine the Quirks and the Vehicle trait.

BirdofPrey

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Re: Battlemech quirks and new mechs in a campaign
« Reply #4 on: 19 March 2013, 05:50:00 »
That's kind of an interesting idea. So say an assault `Mech would have a group of quirks that adds up to -1, so you could purchase that assault `Mech at +7 instead of the normal +8?
Pretty much, yeah.  You could also apply it to the Custom vehicle trait, so that same -1 quirk could get you choice of a stock medium mech at only +1 TP in Custom Vehicle (though to get both of those choices would require -2 TP of quirks).

It can go the other way too, if you have enough to own an assault mech, but only want a heavy, you can get a few positive quirks on your mech.  Similarly, if you somehow have Custom Vehicle at 6 TP, but are restricted from clan mechs you could instead get an IS mech with +2 TP of quirks.
I suppose it could also let you transfer TP between Vehicle and Custom vehicle; rather than getting a random heavy, you can choose a medium, but you have to take a positive trait which would raise the Vehicle TP requirement and a negative trait to lower the custom vehicle requirement.


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You know, I wonder if it might not be possible to combine the Quirks and the Vehicle trait.
That's essentially what this is.  Vehicle Price plus or minus any quirks.  THe quirk doesn't exist on the character sheet, it just makes the mech cost more or less TP.


The bit that keeps getting me is the disconnect between vehicle and custom vehicle.
I suppose if you want to combine those you could have the Custom Vehicle Trait be a modifier on the Vehicle trait along with the +2 to own a mech (So you can have a random medium mech assigned at +4 Vehicle; at +6 you can either own a random medium or choose a medium that is assigned to you and at +8 you can choose a medium mech to own ).  Modify the requirements for quirks as well.

monbvol

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Re: Battlemech quirks and new mechs in a campaign
« Reply #5 on: 19 March 2013, 10:04:24 »
We haven't used anything in the way of quirks yet in our group but I am of the mind to go with same quirk point total but not the same quirks.

Labyr

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Re: Battlemech quirks and new mechs in a campaign
« Reply #6 on: 19 March 2013, 18:08:20 »
I don't like carrying traits over. Since mechwarriors gain or lose mechs outside of the XP system, it doesn't make sense to say some things you bought in chargen carry over but not others. This might be coloured by the way we play though. All of our vehicles are stated out, so if a player with a medium mech loses their mech they are assigned the best of what's left. Adding or removing traits to mechs that already have a history really breaks immersion for me.

Acolyte

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Re: Battlemech quirks and new mechs in a campaign
« Reply #7 on: 19 March 2013, 18:25:26 »
I don't like carrying traits over. Since mechwarriors gain or lose mechs outside of the XP system, it doesn't make sense to say some things you bought in chargen carry over but not others. This might be coloured by the way we play though. All of our vehicles are stated out, so if a player with a medium mech loses their mech they are assigned the best of what's left. Adding or removing traits to mechs that already have a history really breaks immersion for me.

Unless it's something that can logically be transferred over - like computer systems. Even there you'd better have a pretty hot tech to shoehorn it in.

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massey

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Re: Battlemech quirks and new mechs in a campaign
« Reply #8 on: 21 March 2013, 10:30:52 »
I wouldn't normally say that a character who started with, say, an assault mech, who then gets it killed, would through some quirk of fortune automatically get another assault mech.  That's got a very HERO system feel to it, "I paid points for it so it's part of my character".  Same goes for carrying over mech quirks.

As a GM, I'd give players the option of playing with quirks or not.  Maybe you got a Stinger that has a roomier cockpit for some reason.  If they chose to use quirks, I'd assign them to each mech according to campaign balance and background.  If a player really really wants a particular option, that's something that has to be handled through a lot of roleplaying.

monbvol

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Re: Battlemech quirks and new mechs in a campaign
« Reply #9 on: 21 March 2013, 11:16:15 »
I will say some of the issues brought up in this thread about how vehicle works is why I still want to go back and improve how the RATs for my AU work with it even further.

Short version since I have a thread dedicated to my house rules is you roll on the indicated column of the RAT and there is less of a relation of the column to a specific weight band than there is currently in AToW.

If I could sell TPTB on adopting such a system I totally would because it allows Vehicle to represent a re-supply priority past character creation.  Basically if you salvage something, great, don't need re-supply then do you?  If not then well here's what we have on hand.

Quirks can work the same way, especially since many mechs do have default quirks now.  Because you get a different mech you can wind up with different quirks.  In the scavenger days of 3025 even if you get the same mech it'd be possible to get different quirks because say your Warhammer has to make do with a Cataphract's arm and a targeting system ripped out of an old Centurian.  Who knows what kind of strange quirks such a franken mech would develop.