Sup fa/tg/uys. How many of you remember how awesome this shit was?
My gaming group and I were talking about awesome cartoons we watched growing up. After discussing Medabots we decided we were going to try to play a tabletop version of it.
How would this work ? My group doesn't feel like straying too far from what they already know, so they want to keep using d20, preferably with D&D 3.5 as a base.
We have already realised that a lot of it won't work, like classes and the like, so it'll be a mostly homebrewed system by the time we're done.
Anyone have any suggestions on how we should work this out? Maybe other 'good' d20 systems we could take elements from?
Things we are looking to figure out:
- Ability to design and play your own medabot
- The possibility to swap out parts, which means individual parts need their own stats
- A modern settings with an appropriate skill list
Also, feel free to discuss your thoughts on Medabots in general.
You definitely want a localization damage system. Each part (Head, limb, leg, hand, etc...) should have their own hit points.
It should super matter if your gun arm is blown off, but they're robots so keep fighting. Look at Mekton Zeta for some super in depth robot building rules that you could adapt/simplify.
>>46919123
I'll be sure to give that a good look, thanks.
I remember doing a game like this years ago, idid actually a target system like fallout, to aim to each part of the body
however every single hit my playes did was to aim for the head, since it was considered a critical hit, even if that was harder to hit that other parts of the body
also, try to do habilities that depends of an specific part, like, you cannot use a long sword if your character doesnt have two arms, or he has a gun with one arm, but it aims better if he has both of them working
as for a seting maybe just try something around a tournament, the game i did had a very basic and fun system so grinding to defeat other guys was not a problem
>>46920561
I was thinking of having it be a 40% chance to hit the legs, 25% for each arm and 10% for the head.
Not entirely sure how targeting a specific part would go, probably just increase the DC, that's preferable to a miss chance.
I'm looking through Mekton Zeta books right now, hoping to be able to translate it to something simpler.
Modify Engine Heart a bit and you're set.
>>46919021
>Sup fa/tg/uys. How many of you remember how awesome this shit was?
There was actually a miniature game with it's own hex prism dice.
>>46920678
maybe you should give reasons to yoru players to hit anything else than the head instead to make it harder to hit, like, they will get the part that they destroyed first at the end of the battle,
>>46920921
That would work rather well I think. Though they might just shrug it off and end up with a metric fuckton of head parts.
>>46920970
then you can say "this hability works better if you have this part and this oter too!", or if they end with a lot of parts, you can create a crafting system
also, you should think also i give each part two values, one to get the part totally destroyed/disabled during all combat (and its harder to get), and another wich is easier to get, wich disables the part for some turns, so in case that part has a pasive hability it gets disabled and you can do more damage, or something like that
>>46920738
Fuck yeah dude, I had some of those and I forgot! Wonder if I could still get my hands on some of them?
>>46919021
I remember the show, it was awesome.
This is interesting. Go on.
>>46921031
All I remember is that you could take arms legs and body parts apart and switch them to another bot for changed stats.
>>46921082
I used to play the GBA game, it had a fuckton of stats tho, maybe we can use them?
>>46921018
You could get a stunning ability on one of the parts, but I'm trying to keep it simple and close to the game/show.
That means one health pool per part and it either works or doesn't.
>>46921117
It's also important to note that I want to allow the players to come up with their own medabots, not just take ones from the games. This is the process I had in mind:
>Pick theme/type of Medabot
>Decide on combat role (Offense/defense/support)
>Assign abilities to parts (Just the abilities themselves at first, numbers come later)
The biggest problem I'm running into is balancing the abilities they can assign..Engine Heart and Mekton Zeta are good sources for inspiration,
but I can't quite work out how those systems are supposed to work. Especially since I'm trying to translate it into a system that's playable for people who have only ever played D&D.
>>46920970
>>46920921
incentivize correctly to thwart that.
perhaps remove the "crit when hit in the head" quality, and combine with "torso damage incapacitates" then make the torso disproportionately heavily armored.
>>46921282
My second major 'problem' is finding a way to stat the actual player characters. Friends have suggested simply taking D&D 3.5 and changing the skill list, but leveling them up would be kind of odd.
>>46921322
But the torso is the same part as the head. Simply having it be the hardest to hit would seem fine to me, since you're likely to need multiple chances to hit it in the first place, which means it might be favorable to take out enemy offense first.
Critting when hitting the head seems like a silly mechanic anyway, since it's already the part that needs to be taken out in order to win, you don't need any more incentive to go for it.
>>46920738
Goddamn I wonder where my old ones went...
>>46921397
>since it's already the part that needs to be taken out in order to win,
I thought that was the chip in the back of the torso...
>>46921414
Right, but that comes out the moment you wreck the torso.
>>46921282
well I think is for the best if you think about a medabot if each part has it "class", for example, the head should be a support class type part, wich grants the robot a bonus in aiming, and each arm has a bonus depending of wich type of gun is using at the moment, so all of the parts create a combo
and you can give yoru playes some starter medabots, one specialized on sword fighting other on stealth, etc, so the player understands how mixing habilites wotrks in his favor and then he will vame up with his own medabots, trying to make the most eficient combo
its like something like what dark souls do
man your proyect got me nostalgic and a rush of ideas popped out
>>46921397
You're almost certain to have a bad time trying to use 3.5 for this.
Just have everyone put on their big kid pants and use a different system.
It'll save so much on effort and headaches.
>>46921431
Yeah, I understand why. Personally I would prefer a d100 system, but they insist on wanting d20.
>>46921282
u can use the concept behind every part tho, i'm not saying to copy it
it might be useful
>>46921431
>>46921458
Just had a talk with one of my players. He seems perfectly alright with using a d100 system.
Which is good, because I thought he'd be the hardest to convince.
>>46919021
classes sound like it would just be the type of medal you use for your medabot. its not as flexible as standard tabletop classes, and you wont be able to multiclass, but certain medals have always specialized in certain functions. for example, a medabot with the kumagawa medal would be a great brawler, since they specializze in melee and evasion. kabuto would obviously be a ranger or gunslinger, and mermaid would be the healer. then you try to see what other medals can perform certain functions. the chameleon medal specializes in stealth and might make a good rogue. The knight medal is made for tanks with some good melee attacks. About the only ones that are particularly non-particular are the "?" and "!" medals i believe. i cant remember how those specialized in the gba game i played.
>>46921826
if you run out of mod ideas I offer up this thing
stats are in d100(different names, in Dark Heresy's roll-under mechanic)
I and the others working on this had a similar problem coming up with distinctive mods that weren't just stat upgrades...take what we made and use it if it will help.
>>46921952
specifically the frame mods on page 17
>>46919021
weren't the toys basically a tabletop game?
each toy had numbers on the part and you rolled a die that came with the figures to determine where it his and how much damage
>>46921952
Aight, I'll check it out.
>>46919021
>d20
>3.5
Fucking Dropped
>>46923597
We're switching to d100, prolly Dark Heresy-like rules.
>>46919021
www.reddit.com/r/Medabot
>>46921458
>Yeah, I understand why. Personally I would prefer a d100 system, but they insist on wanting d20.
Remember not all d20 is 3.5, as each side of a d20 is an increment of 5%.
>>46919021
1. If you have to: find d20 future. It's a d20 modern guide book, based on 3.0 D&D, but it has robot creation rules.
2. Establish a "stock chassis" and give players room to build from there.
3. Let them come with clearly defined concept with, like, three traits. (Mine is a sniper robot: high damage, long range, super accurate. Mine is a cat robot! It is stealthy, does acrobatic jumps and has claws!) Then you as a GM come up with the weakness (your sniper needs to take careful aim, so you have a low rate of fire. Your cat is not very obedient, so it might ignore you)
D20 future Isn't as bad as d20 modern, but I still wouldn't't want to use it purely. For PC classes, might I suggest Spycraft? Much better balanced than d20 modern's base classes.
Each Medabot is comprised by:
- 4 Medaparts. Out of which:
-- One is a Head part. If defeated, the Medabot's function cease. It also has limited uses.
-- Two are arm parts. Unlimited uses.
-- Head and arm parts have different charge/radiation times which affects speed (some parts will take longer to charge).
-- In newer Medabots games some parts have subskills. For example, Rifle will always be a shooting attack, but some rifle parts also have the "Aim Shot" subskill which is optional, granting extra accuracy in exchange of not being able to evade the next attack. In older games (GBA) this couldn't be chosen.
-- One is a Leg part. Determines how well the Medabot will fare in different environments, its speed, and its overall defense.
-- Some Medabots have medachanges. Consider the new form as a Medabot with one HP track (adding all parts together) with new attacks.
- A Medal. It learns medaforces as it levels up and holds all of the Medabot's stats.
- A tinpet, determining if it's male or female.
Also there is a tonshit of Medabots out there really. This website http://medarot.meowcorp.us/wiki/Lists_of_Medarots will hopefully give you a comprehensive list of all Medabots, including a poster with all of them in the first two GB games. So there's no need to create anything.
wut
http://medarot.meowcorp.us/wiki/Element_Mark
>>46934284
>Between its Medarot Navi and Medarot 8 appearances, Element Mark was popularized by Pixiv user Kouichi, who uploaded pictures of various Medarots with Element Mark's Carbon head part equipped. The humorous artwork is likely to have been a factor in its return in Medarot 8, where its transforming mechanics were changed such that it always keeps its Carbon head.
>>46919021
Aww yeah, Medabots is my jam.
I haven't done any homebrew work on it, though I did homebrew some rules for a Custom Robo tabletop game, which is a bit similar.
That had a larger focus on mobility and flight though, and didn't have the same sort of idea of limbs and weapons getting wrecked.
I think the two most important things are having a good list of parts to mix-and-match a custom medabot, as well as making sure the battle mechanics feel right for what's often shown.
For example, very rarely do you see a Medabot get knocked out immediatly by headshots. They're often very good at using their arms to block or dodging to take cover. Many fights have many limbs knocked out on both sides before they end, so that should be a goal to help make the combat more interesting and tactical.
Likewise, there needs to be a good parity between the sheer variety of stuff you can include. Somebody who builds a melee Medabot using a base kit is going to struggle against a gatling gun strapped to a flying medabot. Different mobility types as well as different weapon categories shouldn't completely invalidate others. There needs to be a downside to just strapping a massive gun on the fastest chassis you can find.
>>46934781
>There needs to be a downside to just strapping a massive gun on the fastest chassis you can find.
That the massive gun probably has low charge/radiation times, is inaccurate, or gets destroyed after use. Pic related.
>>46934851
True, though there's also the issue of just using a set of flying legs and sitting in the air to plink away at non-ranged enemies.
>>46934903
"What if the GM threw a flying opponent who can cast magic missile and no one can reach him." The GM should know this is bad practice.
"What if a player can fly and cast magic missile, no opponent being able to hit him." Either let him use the trick for weak enemies, or make sure your enemy can actually fly or reach them, for stronger ones.
Oh man, this didn't die overnight, sweet.
>>46931628
My potential players have said they want to create their own, so I'll let them do that. Shouldn't cause too much trouble.
The subskills they will can gain through upgrading their medabot, allowing them to improve the parts they like.
>>46931426
We've already decided to move to Dark Heresy-like d100, so d20 future won't be nessecary.
Creating a stock chassis is a good idea though. The three traits too. I'll give Spycraft a look.
>>46934781
>>46934851
>>46934903
>>46935732
Balancing around different movement types probably won't be too much of a problem, but I should definitely keep it in mind.
also I think you should have a terrain/day-night/season system of some sorts, so your playes should have reasons to play also with leg parts, because in my game i remeber the always went for the most durable ones
>>46921397
>Friends have suggested simply taking D&D 3.5 and changing the skill list
Every fuckin' time.
>>46940361
I know man, it sucks, but they've changed their opinions thanks to this thread.
Battle Century G might work it uses area damage and can make custom bots with abstracted weapons that could easily be hacked into the various parts.
>>46919021
You have triggered my nostalgia.
I want to do this with Fate. How should I proceed, given the head-arms-leg things are basically mandatory? Who would take the consequences?
>>46947006
Not familiar with Fate, sorry
